Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

Family & Safeco Field (9/30/10)

Tim’s little brother, Kellan, was born in July and there was no way that I was going to allow him to miss out on meeting the Mariners during the first baseball season of his life. And there was no way Kellan was going to experience his first game anywhere but Safeco Field. So, as the season drew to a close, we found ourselves in Seattle.

Kellan’s first game was slated for Friday, October 1, 2010.

But we were in town a couple days early to visit my family and the Mariners were playing. There was no way that Tim and I were gonna miss out. On Thursday, September 30, 2010, we gathered up my mom, dad, and brother Jason, and headed down to Safeco Field.

We had Colleen’s sister’s family in town with us and a lot going on, so we headed down late and missed batting practice. When we arrived, no one was on the field. So, we headed to the play area…

…Tim always enjoys the Safeco Field play area. When he finished up playing, we found the Mariners Moose nearby…

…and posed for a picture with him in his little Moose den.

Next, we figured we better head over to the Mariners dugout to see what was going on with our Mariners. And that’s when we saw one of the prettiest sights we’d seen all season:

Ah, beautiful Safeco Field. We love this place.

Other than Chone Figgins stretching down the RF line, none of the players were on the field. But we did see some of the Mariners top brass…

After a bit, there were a bunch of Mariners warming up down the RF line. Tim and I headed over there…

…and we were essentially the only people around when Greg Halman finished playing catch. I called out, “Hey, Greg!” He turned around and fired the ball to us.

Thanks, Greg!

It was just minutes until game time, so we reported to our seats in RF. We picked RF because the week day crowds had been tiny lately at Safeco Field and we figured our chances of getting near a homerun ball would be decent. Also, as an added bonus, we’d been near Ichiro.

Speaking of Ichiro. Turns out Chuck Armstrong was in the dugout because he was getting ready to present Ichiro with some awards of some sort…

….for being the first Major Leaguer to collect 200 hits for ten straight seasons.

We were pretty busy chatting and generally having a good time during the game, so I did a pretty shabby job at getting action shots. But we’ll do our best to take you through the night.

Here was our crew…an excellent bunch of ballgame companions (note that Tim was busy eating a hot pile of nachos)…

…and here was our view of Ichiro as he played catch with Franklin Gutierrez between innings.

And this was our view of the game from Section 109, Row 25, seats 5-9:

Now is that a great looking ballpark or what? By the way, Row 25 is the third row back from the field in RF at Safeco.

As for the game, it started off nicely. It was the A’s and the Mariners. Doug Fister took on Gio Gonzalez. Both pitchers were “on” at the beginning. Despite some hits by both teams through the early innings (including a first inning single for Ichiro (his 209th hit of the season)), the game was scoreless through four innings.

It was a lot cooler at this game than we were used to while attending games in the northeast. So, a couple innings into the game, my mom, Tim and I visited the M’s team store and I got a great deal on a new Mariners sweatshirt for Tim.

On the way back to our seats, we decided to walk by the Mariners bullpen.

I noticed something interesting, something that I’d never noticed before…

…a little cut out at the front of the M’s bullpen mound with a flat ground pitching rubber. That was a new one on me.

As I stood at the fence starring at my camera’s LCD screen and taking some of the worst and most blurry pictures of all time of Ichiro batting…

It was great to catch up with RRS. It was interesting to chat about what it was like in the clubhouse as the Mariners were 97 losses into the season and four days away from the off-season. It was also cool to get a sneak preview into his very interesting training plans for the off-season. I felt a bit bad seeing RRS watching the game from the bullpen after a tough season. And I was hoping I’d get a chance to see him pitch once more and close out the season on a positive note. While it wouldn’t happen at this game, I would get my chance.

Soon, we headed back to our seats. It was time for a chocolate cihp cookie dough ice cream helmet…

…but as things got sweet for Tim, they got sour for the Mariners.

Between the fifth and sixth innings, Doug Fister gave up 6 runs and Brian Sweeney gave up the seventh run of the game. Quickly, our pitchers’ dual turned ugly.

But after 97 losses, we were used to seeing the M’s trailing their opponent and we were able to still have a good time…

…as we watched the Mariners on the way to their 98th loss of the season. Hey, check out that great new sweatshirt on Tim. Its a zip-up with a teal inner hood. Very nice.

(By the way, I made Tim take off his new sweatshirt and wear his old green sweatshirt to eat his ice cream helmet. That guy is sloppy with the ice cream.)

It was also very nice to be hanging out behind Ichiro:

And, of course, it was nice to get a chance to snap a picture of the Greg Halman ball:.

Speaking of Greg Halman, he made an outstanding diving catch in left field. In fact, it was such a nice, high speed diving catch…

…that he broke his belt in the process.

After Halman’s catch, I figured I should go back over by the bullpen to snap a shot of Halman. While I was there, I also snapped a picture of the Mariners’ mop-headed September call-up, Dan Cortes…

…interestingly, five days later with the season concluded, we were getting ready to board our airplane back to Pennsylvania while Mr. Cortes was getting ready to board his flight back home to the Los Angeles area. (FYI, the white and red arrow is pointing to my brother and parents).

Well, we made it to the 8th inning. It was still 7-0 A’s, and despite fairly empty seats, we’d managed to go the whole game without catching a homerun.

And then, the perfect opportunity arose…and I totally botched it.

With two outs in the top of the 8th inning, Chad Pennington hit a homerun in our direction. I had an open lane to the ailse. It seemed like it was going to land 5-10 rows behind us and right on the aisle. I bolted to the aisle and headed up three rows. Then the ball totally died. I turned around but couldn’t make it back to “the spot.” The spot, sadly, was precisely at the aisle seat…

….in THE ROW IN WHICH I WAS JUST SITTING. It was right there, on my side of the green railing. RIGHT THERE! Had I stayed put, I could have caught it easily.

I still had a chance. Someone bobbled the ball. I made a dive for it down the stairs while passing under that railing, which ultimately resulted in several flesh wounds and two large buises but no baseball.

Aye, aye, aye…

Oh, well. while I really would like to catch a game homerun some day, I would much, much, MUCH prefer that it not be a homerun off of the Mariners.

Anyway, it was moving into the 9th inning. Tim and I decided to head over to the 3B dugout in hopes of getting our hands on our first ever Safeco Field umpire ball.

Here was our first view as Anthony Varvaro pitched to Kevin Kouzmanoff…

…the white arrow is pointing to my brother and parents. We were in the concourse standing room area for that picture.

A few minutes later, we mae it to the first row right on the umpire tunnel, but an usher told us we couldn’t sit in the “charter” seats. I asked her how far back we had to go. Row 11 was acceptable.

So, this was our view from the 11th row of Ichi’s final at bat of the night when,…

…after a hard foul liner right over our heads, he smacked a single for his 210th hit of the season.

After the final out of the game — and an 8-1 loss — home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman handed a beautiful rubbed up baseball to Tim (pictured below). It was the 105th baseball in the “Todd & Tim Baseball Partners Era.” Our next baseball would be our first of the “Todd, Tim & Kellan 3-Man Baseball Team Era.”

It was a miserable loss, but it was great being back at Safeco Field and it was great spending the evening with my family.

On the walk back to my brother and parents in RF, an usher took this excellent shot of me and my boy...

…and then…

…another usher took this excellent shot of all of us.

As we left the park, I was excited to know that we’d be walking back into the park less than 24 hours later for the first game of Kellan’s life!

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